Project Summary The Indian Institutes of Technology have become famous in India, the United States and many other parts of the world for the high quality engineers they produce, and are at least partially responsible for making high technology one of the dominant images of India today. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were a paradoxical combination of the newly independent India's desire to achieve self-sufficiency in the areas of science and technology, and assistance from the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and West Germany. This study, focusing primarily, but not exclusively on the cases of American involvement, will examine how Indians and foreigners worked together to establish these institutions which were conceptualized by many as Indian MITs. It will then examine how these institutions functioned within the Indian economy and technological system, as well as in a global technological system. It will do so first by looking at the development of computer engineering, aeronautical engineering, and sanitary engineering as disciplines at IIT and then examine developments in these areas within the wider Indian economy, looking closely at the role played by IIT faculty and alumni. It will then look at IIT graduates in the United States, examining their career paths and their entrepreneurial activities in the United States. It will then look at the flows of technical information and people back to India. This grant will provide for one year's leave and travel funding, which together will allow for the completion of the bulk of the research in American and British archives. The intellectual merit of this study is that it will be the first sustained consideration of the Indian Institutes of Technology by an academically trained historian. It will go beyond being merely a narrow history of an institution and link the Indian Institutes of Technology to broader developments in technology in both the United States and India. This study will increase our understanding of technical relations between the United States and India, drawing attention to the reciprocal nature of those relations. It will contribute towards the growing trends towards the internationalization of American history and the broadening of our definition of international relations. It answers the call of scholars such as Thomas P. Hughes and David Hounshell to consider the development of technology across national boundaries, a call that has not been fully answered. It will also provide an important case study of how systems of technological education operate in a global environment. In terms of broader impacts the book that will come out of this research will be written to be accessible to a wide audience of historians, engineers, educators, and the general public. It will broaden the base of the discipline of the history of technology in America and the Society for the History of Technology to more fully include the history of technology in post-independence India. It has the potential to lead to collaboration between American and Indian scholars. It will provide resources for scholars who wish to write or teach on global topics in the history of technology. Given the great amount of attention the American press has given in the last few years to India's role in the American economy, this study will make an important contribution by broadening our knowledge of technological relations between the United States and India, and providing a deeper understanding of the role of an important and influential ethnic minority group within the American technological community.
